Exhibit: Sept 8 – Oct 21, 2017, at PLATFORM gallery
Presented in a partnership between WNDX, PLATFORM and Urban Shaman Gallery
In early July, 2017 Scott Benesiinaabandan, Florene Belmore and Rebecca Belmore spent a week together in Sioux Lookout, Ontario. A photo from the Ontario Archives taken by John Macfie in 1955 drew the artists to the site. In the photograph, taken before the artists were born, seven boys from Pelican Falls residential school in denim coveralls watch a man fishing on the lake. They are facing away from the camera. “At Pelican Falls” focuses on experiential connection and archival intimacy within specific places.
All three artists’ extended families are connected to this place and history, and thus the image speaks to their own stories. Starting with the picture, they visited the old Pelican Falls residential school grounds, and fished at the falls. While they couldn’t locate the exact rock in the archival photograph, they quietly walked the grounds where the old school once stood. The resulting works articulate the visit and its significance to each artist in dialogue with one another, the photograph and the site.
Read the response essay by Dr. Jessica Jacobson-Konefall.
